Professor Charles W.J. Withers, head of the Institute of Geography at Scotland’s University of Edinburgh, will give two lectures at York – one today and another tomorrow.
Today’s talk, titled "Mungo Park African Explorer: Science, Credibility and Trust", takes place from 2 to 4pm in the Vanier Senior Common Room, 010 Vanier College. Tomorrow, Withers’ talk, titled "Geography, Environment and Dominion Science: Canadian Meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1884-1924", runs from 11:30am to 1:30pm in N120 Ross Bldg.
Right: Charles W.J. Withers
Withers’ principal work is in the fields of cultural and historical geography, the history of geographical knowledge and science, geography and the enlightenment, and the cultural geography of Gaelic Scotland. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, The Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Arts.
A prolific writer, Withers is the author of several books, including Placing the Enlightenment: Thinking Geographically about the Age of Reason (University of Chicago Press, 2007), Gaelic in Scotland 1698 to 1891: The Geographical History of a Language (John Donald, 1984), Geography, Science and National Identity: Scotland since 1520 (Cambridge University Press, 2005). In addition, Withers co-edited several books, including Geography and Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 2005), Georgian Geographies: essays on space, place and landscape in the eighteenth century (Manchester University Press, 2004) and Science and Medicine in the Scottish Enlightenment (Tuckwell Press, 2002). He is currently co-editing a volume of Geographies of the Book.
The two lectures on York’s Keele campus are sponsored by York’s graduate programs in Geography and Humanities, the Faculty of Environmental Studies and the Department of Geography.